Call for Papers: War, Empire, and Culture

The 2008 Texas Tech Comparative Literature Symposium
on “War, Empire, and Culture”

April 11-12, 2008 at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas

Texas Tech University houses the largest Vietnam Archive in the United States, and West Texas has been home to thousands of war veterans and immigrants. Spring in Lubbock is mild and sunny.

Keynote Speakers:

Caren Kaplan, Women and Gender Studies Program, University of California at Davis
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Departments of English and American Studies & Ethnicity, University of Southern California
John Carlos Rowe, Departments of English and American Studies & Ethnicity, University of Southern California

Proposal Submission Deadline: January 15, 2008 

Whether calling it new imperialism or redefining it in terms of neoliberalism, the current war on terrorism has not only profoundly impacted American life and society, but it has also raised new questions on the function of war in constituting the American national imaginary and facilitating the American global vision. What effect does the preemptive war have on the concept of bellum justum or just war in the global context? How do we theorize wars, religious and secular, which have increasingly informed and reshaped our regional and global politics and environments, in relation to the U.S.-centered global order and global market? How do we understand the American and global “culture industries” that have conditioned both the acceptance of and resistance to wars?

This symposium looks for papers that investigate the political and economic dimensions of wars in American and global contexts as well as papers that explore the representation of wars in different cultural forms, genres, and media. We welcome both proposals that examine war as a process of nation and empire building and projects that offer innovative interpretations of cultural production that foregrounds the dynamics of war and its impact upon our life, society, and environment.

Possible topics may include but are not restricted to the following:

• The war on terrorism and the media representation

• The war on terrorism and capitalist imperialism

• The war on terrorism and the discourse of human rights and free market

• Religious conflicts between India and Pakistan, between Israel and Palestinians

• Racial and ethnic conflicts in India, Ireland, Haiti, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka

• Ethnic genocide in Darfur, Congo, Indonesia, and Turkey 

• Religious and Racial conflicts in Chechnya, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Tibet  

• War Atrocities: the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanjing, My Lai Massacre, and Comfort Women

• War, colonialism, and neocolonialism

• War and American exceptionalism

• Nation building as empire building in the nineteenth century America

• The Spanish American War and U.S. imperialism in the Philippines

• The Mexican American War and the construction of the American Southwest

• Westward expansion and American frontier myths

• Casualties of war: displacement, migration, and expulsion

• World War II and Japanese American internment experience

• The American War in Vietnam and Hollywood cinema

• The American War in Vietnam and the reconstruction of masculinity

• The American War in Vietnam and Vietnamese American experiences

• War and memory

• Women and war

• War and anti-war movements

• Drug wars in Latin America

• Cyber war and post-humanity

• War, technology, and discourse

 Please send your one-page proposal and one-page C.V. by January 15, 2008:

Dr. Yuan Shu
Department of English
P.O. Box 43091
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-3091

You may email your inquiry, proposal, and C.V. to Dr. Yuan Shu at (yuan.shu@ttu.edu).